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No way to raise a boy
MercatorNet.com ^ | Friday, 3 August 2007 | Kevin Ryan

Posted on 09/02/2007 8:48:44 PM PDT by monomaniac

Kevin Ryan | Friday, 3 August 2007

No way to raise a boy

Do boys have to be bored, fat and dumber than their sisters?
The first in a series about educating boys today.

A ten year old boy, whom I watch with an eagle’s eye, is reading The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden. The book is teaching him how to play poker, build a go-cart from scratch, how to fold a paper glider so that it really flies, to makes a paper water bomb and much, much more. He has found his Holy Grail. Wedged in between the book’s black arts are spirited short essays on heroic battles, good manners and, yes, girls. Be forewarned, gentle reader, this book is definitely not politically correct, and worse, it could turn around a boy’s life.

The 10-year-old I have in my sights is a busy home-schooler whose days and heart are torn between pitching in the town baseball league and his beloved violin. While a leader on the ball field and popular with his mates, I have to admit, he is sort of "out-of-it." When the talk moves from the ballgame to video games, the kid is a wash-out. When the conversations moves on to television, as it does regularly…(television and movies being the lingua franca of boys from six to that ever-moving outer boundary of adolescence)…, the boy is a dunce. He thinks "24" is the definition of a day. He wouldn’t recognise Paris Hilton if she tried to run him over. He’s focused on learning how to step into a pitch and to do something with his violin that I don’t comprehend.

He is clearly out of step with modern boydom. But how and when things changed for boys is hard for me to pin down. Somewhere not too long ago, boys went indoors. When they don’t have their eyes glued to some screen, whether computer, TV, movie or even, yes, cell phone, they are shuffling along alone or in sullen groups at the mall. Building tree huts and shooting at squirrels with beebee guns lost out big time to the latest version of Xbox and the newest action-adventure fantasy at the Cinaplex.

And they look so bored! How can a 12-year-old boy be that bored… unless he has been made so passive with canned pleasure that he doesn’t know what else to do. He has never learned to do anything other than turn on his toys. He doesn’t have the reading habit because DVDs are easier. He doesn’t play outside in the neighbourhood. First, the other guys aren’t there. They are indoors and are stuck to their own screens. Second, he and his peers’ parents are convinced that if he is outside, he’ll be kidnapped, beaten up by bullies or meet a recruiter from the North American Man Boy Love Association.

Our modern boy doesn’t get much exercise which you can tell from his rounded shoulders and the baby fat which he should have been shed years earlier. But how could he. He is driven or bussed to school for safety reasons. When he gets exercise it is part of an adult-saturated, over-organised sports world where physical contact between boys is only allowed when they are covered head-to-toe with enough protective gear to make movement barely possible. Arguments about whether a referee [yes, of course, they have to have referees] made the correct call is strictly verboten. A scuffle with another player could get him banned from the league and his anxious parents in the grandstands would be forced to live in infamy.

Other than manipulate the "on" and "off" switches, the volume controls and a few other knobs, modern boy doesn’t know how to do much. He has never had to do much and the men in his life have conveniently disappeared or are too busy with their work or their own pleasures that they have never taught him to do anything. He doesn’t know how to wash a car, saw wood, hammer a nail, trim a hedge, weed a garden [let alone raise a vegetable garden], bait a rat trap, or repair a punctured bike tire. Maybe with sufficient nagging, he can make his bed [sort of], take the dishes out of the dishwasher and put out the garbage, chores that in another day would have been the province of his sister.

Then there is school. In recent decades, no part of society has become more feminised, more boy-unfriendly. First of all, for young boys to sit quietly in desk seats for six or seven hours a day has long been contrary to the laws of nature. However, in the past, children walked to school in the morning, walked or run home for lunch and did the same at 3:00, only to get their ball and glove and work off the pent-up energy from the school day.

Second, there are fewer and fewer male teachers. The principalship, once the province of men, is now more and more the province of the fairer sex. Those male teachers that are left live in fear of intimacy or even putting a hand on a boy’s shoulder, lest they become a tort lawyer’s meal ticket.

Third, the academic ante has been raised in our schools. The stakes are higher and there is more and more pressure to get the children ready to compete in the global economy. That can be translated into students becoming more and more skilled at the manipulation of symbols, tasks at which our boys are not genetically endowed and, thus, are falling behind.

Most educators are scratching their heads at what is now called the "crisis of boys." On the other hand, girls are doing well. They outshine boys in all aspects of the symbol-driven world we live in. They get better grades and have higher aspirations. Girls outnumber boys in Advance Placement programs, in most math and science courses and in all extracurricular activities except sports. In 2006, girls represented 58 per cent of the student bodies at US colleges and universities.

It is little wonder that junior is in a funk. He is not living according to his nature, and while he may not know it, he can feel it. Somehow we have changed the way we live and while there appear to be many benefits, the way we are living is having disastrous effects on our boys. Given all the other crises facing the world, getting excited and making serous changes in how we raise our boys may not vault to the top of our collective priority list. But think about it. A nation without men, with only pleasure-saturated, spineless screen-watchers is a truly frightening prospect.

Kevin Ryan founded the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at Boston University, where he is professor emeritus. He has written and edited 20 books. He has appeared recently on CBS's "This Morning", ABC's "Good Morning America", "The O’Reilly Factor", CNN and the Public Broadcasting System speaking on character education. He can be reached at kryan@bu.edu .


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bookreview; boys; crisisofboys; dangerousbook; education; family; malemodel; masculine; play; profamily; school; television; videogames
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To: geopyg
Setting firecrackers off at the town's movie theater matinee. That was always good for a lecture from the owner. As a girl, I didn't take part. As the little sister of four older brothers, I was often sent to the corner store to buy cartons of cigarettes "for my mother," as the lady behind the counter would never sell a carton to any of the brothers. Wicked, wicked boys, SMOKING!!! The horror!

These poor damned kids today can't have any fun.

21 posted on 09/03/2007 12:19:28 AM PDT by Finny ( Only saps buy man-caused global warming.)
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To: television is just wrong

BSA Bump!


22 posted on 09/03/2007 12:20:27 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback (Libs obviously don’t believe pro-lifers are terrorists, or they'd placate us by banning abortion.)
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To: Finny

I loved the story arc where Calvin builds a model of an F-4, and tells Hobbes that “instructions are for sissies.” Hilarity ensues.


23 posted on 09/03/2007 12:23:45 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback (Libs obviously don’t believe pro-lifers are terrorists, or they'd placate us by banning abortion.)
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To: Finny

“Just because a male is a sissy doesn’t mean he isn’t a man. That’s God’s truth. And it’s why I’m eternally optimistic with regard to boys and men.”

Even during the Revolutionary War, about 1/3 of the population didn’t give a darn as to the outcome. A sissy, is a sissy, is a sissy, whether man or woman. Just hope there are enough others with the right stuff to come through when the sh*t hits the fan, which it has already started to do for quite a few years. We really need men, that’s real men please, to put their foot down and start fighting back, and not only verbally, but by action. In particular, younger men who can make a real difference by the careers they choose, and the efforts they make politically. Sooner than later, please.


24 posted on 09/03/2007 12:43:45 AM PDT by flaglady47 (Thinking out loud while grinding teeth in political frustration)
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To: geopyg
but all in all lots of good “boy things”.

Those "boy things" are now treated as though they were symptomatic of a disease. I think that one of the worst problems is excessive (paranoid?) parental devotion to the elimination of physical risk for their boys.

These days, it's "Bobby, you must wear knee pads! Precious Bobby must not scratch his precious knee! And a helmet! Don't go outside without your helmet! Stay in the back yard and don't move! If you don't move, you won't get hurt!"

Where it used to be, "Bobby, you're a mess again. Here's some soap and band-aids, clean yourself up, you know the routine. You'd better soak those pants in cold water to get the bloodstains out. Dinner's in 15 minutes."

25 posted on 09/03/2007 1:00:01 AM PDT by TChad
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To: Finny
That book is probably The American Boy’s Handy Book: What to Do and How to Do It by Daniel Carter Beard. It’s available in a couple of reprints now. An amusing compendium of boy lore. An excellent book for boys.

—tkoed

26 posted on 09/03/2007 1:56:59 AM PDT by The King of Elflands Daughter
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To: metmom; PinkDolphin

Excellent article!


27 posted on 09/03/2007 5:19:13 AM PDT by Northern Yankee (Freedom Needs A Soldier)
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To: Finny
I cherished my boyhood.

One summer we threw tires on a burning fire next a dog food plant, as a prank.

The fire department was summoned (Because of the billowing black smoke.) The fire department responded, put out the fire, and got a good laugh at the prank. (We saw it from a distance, well hidden of course!)

Today the EPA would be summoned, and all hell would break loose.

28 posted on 09/03/2007 5:23:51 AM PDT by Northern Yankee (Freedom Needs A Soldier)
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To: badbass
but the kidnapping and NAMBLA dangers are very real

This is a leftover from the "stranger danger" myths and utban legends of the late '80's /early nineties. Your boy is in no more danger of being kidnapped than being hit by lightning--possible but just barely--unless he has a noncustodial parent who can't leave it alone. In any case just teach him what we all were taught fifty years ago--don't talk to strangers. Ain't nothing new.

29 posted on 09/03/2007 5:35:15 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: Finny
Boy's books are nothing new

True. I grew up with "Boy's Life" and the Boy Scout Handbook. Taught me everything I needed to knwo about living in the woods.

30 posted on 09/03/2007 5:38:23 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: monomaniac

Right on! On all counts.

My homeschooled Scout boys are being raised the old fashioned way too. Very little TV, no cable, no video games, no I-Pod, big yard with a park behind us.

Read what a former US President had to say in an essay on boys in the early 20th Century.

What is a Boy?

You can absolutely rely on a boy if you know what to expect.
A boy is nature’s answer to the false belief that there is no such thing
as perpetual motion.
The world is so full of boys that it is impossible to touch off a
firecracker, strike up a band or pitch a ball without collecting a
thousand of them.
Boys are not ornamental, they’re useful.
If it were not for boys, the newspapers would go undelivered and unread
and a hundred thousand picture shows would go bankrupt.
The boy is a natural spectator; he watches parades, fires, fights,
football games, automobiles and planes with equal fervor.
However, he will not watch a clock.
A boy is a piece of skin stretched over an appetite.
However, he eats only when he’s awake.
Boys imitate their Dads in spite of all the efforts to teach them good
manners.
Boy’s are very durable.
A boy, if not washed too often and if not kept in kept in a cool quiet
place after each accident , will survive broken bones, hornet’s nests,
swimming holes and five helpings of pie.
Boys love to trade things. They’ll trade fishhooks, marbles, broken
knives and snakes for anything that is priceless or worthless.
When he grows up, he’ll trade puppy love, energy, warts, bashfulness and
a cast-iron stomach for a bay window, pride, ambition, pretense and a
bald head and will immediately say that; “boys aren’t what they used to
be in the good old days.”

Herbert Hoover


31 posted on 09/03/2007 6:30:39 AM PDT by cyclotic (Support Scouting-Raising boys to be men, and politically incorrect at the same time.)
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To: hinckley buzzard; Northern Yankee; Cagey; Darkwolf377

I taught my kids not to yell “mom” if anyone ever grabbed them, but to yell “FIRE” People look when you yell FIRE, but someone could think it was just a bad boy if he yelled for his mom.
And also if anyone ever grabbed them, to make themselves heavy and just drop toward the ground, anything to make it difficult for someone to drag them away. Ever tried to pick up a kid that was trying to stay on the ground? A 75 lb kid weighs about 235 then. haha
And to not worry about proprieties, but to go for the eyes and jam the nose, bite, anything.
Never came to that, thank God. But i made sure they were prepared to fight.


32 posted on 09/03/2007 6:41:51 AM PDT by PinkDolphin
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To: All

I think I’ll start a Culture War on Boys ping list

I’m a charter member. Anyone else want on??


33 posted on 09/03/2007 7:44:46 AM PDT by PinkDolphin (It's amazing how many ills and hurts are cured by the elixir of time. (at least I'm hoping so))
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To: Finny

I didn’t say finding info in a book was new... the Boy Scout Manual has been around for a very long time as well. I said it was ironic.


34 posted on 09/03/2007 8:11:48 AM PDT by Kirkwood
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To: Finny
One of my favorite Calvin & Hobbs strips comes to mind, where Calvin is on the phone to the library to ask if they have books there that will tell him how to build bombs. Shocked, they tell him no. He wonders, "What good is the library, then?"

When he was a kid, my husband learned to build bombs from watching MacGyver.

35 posted on 09/03/2007 8:36:02 AM PDT by HungarianGypsy
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To: Finny
Boy's books are nothing new. My husband has a superb boy's book from the early 1900s with incredible illustrations. There are instructions in this book for everything from making a winged sail for when you're ice skating, to "Taxidermy for Boys."

We have that book. My boys were disappointed in a lot of it. We live in the city, so many of the things in the book we can't do. :(

36 posted on 09/03/2007 8:37:30 AM PDT by HungarianGypsy
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To: monomaniac

BUMP for boys that grow into men!


37 posted on 09/03/2007 11:24:05 AM PDT by dcwusmc (We need to make government so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub.)
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To: television is just wrong
this is why Boy Scouts of AMerica exists. BOYS NEED IT·······································

I am the proud mom of an Eagle Scout!

38 posted on 09/03/2007 12:00:05 PM PDT by wintertime (Good ideas win! Why? Because people are not stupid.)
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To: wintertime

and you should be proud. Eagle Scout is something that is worth accomplishing.

Good for both of you.


39 posted on 09/03/2007 12:49:30 PM PDT by television is just wrong (deport all illegal aliens NOW. Put all AMERICANS TO WORK FIRST. END WELFARE.)
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To: monomaniac
Kevin Peters, the author of the article, can someone get his attention? I have a question for him. He says the Dangerous Book for Boys could turn a boy's life around by, it seems, getting a reluctant reader to read.

What advice would you, Kevin Peters, give for getting reluctant boys to read? Would you give them sexually inappropriate material to read? The American Library Association recommends doing this, going so far as to give awards to quite a lot of sexually inappropriate material just to ensure the widest possible dispersion in accordance with its policy to take a leadership role in ensuring children get access to sexual material and against the US Supreme Court decision it lost in 2003 called US v. ALA.

School districts nationwide are following suit and recommending sexually inappropriate reading for public school children. And the school administrators are doing this in defiance of the local communities. They often claim they have to "balance" everyone's concerns. Exactly what is the "balance" between following ALA policy to give children inappropriate material and US Supreme Court and community policy to keep it away from them? Murdering is wrong, but certainly we can find a "balance" that allows that crime, right?

What, Kevin Peters, do you recommend for reluctant boy readers? What do you think about recommending sexually inappropriate material? What do you think about the ALA doing this? What do you think about schools doing this? Do you have advice for communities that have schools that refuse the citizenry to ensure children maintain access to sexually inappropriate material?

These are not idle questions. These issues are going on right now nationwide. I can provide links if you wish. Please help.

SafeLibraries.org - Are Children Safe in Public Libraries?

SafeLibraries. org - Are Children Safe in Public Libraries?

40 posted on 09/03/2007 8:22:43 PM PDT by plan2succeed.org (www.SafeLibraries.org)
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